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HARRIET EVANS
Happily
Ever After
For Lynne with thanks for everything and love x x
She read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Table of Contents
Prologue: August 1988
April 1997
September 1997
March 1998
November 2000
June 2001
May 2004
September 2008
Epilogue: Four Months Later
Acknowledgements
A note from the author – the books in Happily Ever After
Praise
By the same author
Copyright
About the Publisher
A Happy Ending for Me by Eleanor Bee
They laugh at me, the girls in the canteen,
But one day I will laugh at them.
Black boots jack boots they are everywhere
But I won’t wear them just because they are trendy.
Oh, you treacherous night,
Why won’t you take flight?
For I am like a little red spot that
That …
ELEANOR BEE PUT down her pen and sighed. She stretched her arms above her head, with the weary movement of one who is wrestling with her own Ulysses. Unfortunately, this action inadvertently caught her hand in the gleaming yellow headphones of her new Sony Walkman. The plastic case was yanked abruptly into the air, dangling in front of her face for a brief second before falling to the ground, with a loud crack.
‘Oh, no,’ Eleanor cried, talking to the floor in a tangle of long limbs, simultaneously pulling off her headphones and thus further entangling herself. ‘No!’
The sound of Voice of the Beehive’s ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ from Now That’s What I Call Music 12 in her ears was abruptly silenced. The Walkman lay on the floor, the lid of the cassette player snapped off and lying several feet from her amongst a nest of dust and hair in the corner of the room. Eleanor picked it up and stared at it in despair. The door of the bedroom was ajar, and through it she could hear the sound of glasses clinking, cutlery scraping on plates. And raised voices.
‘You said you’d take her tomorrow, John. You did.’
‘I did not. That’s utter rubbish.’
‘You did. You just weren’t bloody listening, as per usual. It’s fine. I’ll take her.’
‘Not if you’re still in that state you won’t. God, if you could see yourself, Mandana –’
‘You sanctimonious shit. Listen –’
Eleanor jammed the headphones on again. Pressing her hands against her ears, she crawled across to the dusty corner and snatched the plastic tinted cover, brushing herself off as she stood up. She stared out of the window at the pale lemon evening sun, sliding into the clear blue sea. On the beach, the last few swimmers were coming out of the water. An intrepid band was building a fire, getting a barbecue ready, for this far north in August, the sun didn’t set till well after ten.
But Eleanor did not see the view or the people. She stared blindly at the rickety wooden path down to the sea and wondered if she should burst into the kitchen, tell them she didn’t want to go to Karen’s in Glasgow any more. But she was also afraid of interrupting them; she didn’t want to hear what they were saying to each other.
Mum’s dad had died, two weeks before they’d come to Skye. At first it hadn’t seemed like that big a deal. Eleanor felt bad about it but it was true. He lived in Nottingham and they lived in Sussex, and they hardly ever saw him and Mum’s mum. Mum didn’t get on with him and Eleanor and Rhodes had been to the house in Nottingham only twice. The first time he’d smelt of whisky and roared at them when they played in the tiny back garden. The second time he’d had a go at Mum, shouted and told her she was a disgrace. He’d smelt of whisky that time, too. (Eleanor hadn’t known what it was, but Rhodes had told her. He loved knowing everything she didn’t.) Their granny visited them in Sussex instead or saw them for day trips to London, which Eleanor loved, even though nowadays it was annoying Granny didn’t understand she was fourteen and didn’t want to go to babyish things like Madame Tussauds; she wanted to hang out by herself at Hyper Hyper and Kensington Market.
But Mum had been much more upset about Grandpa dying than Eleanor would have expected. Everyone’s parents argue, she reminded herself. Karen had said that last week, when Eleanor had cried all over her and said she didn’t want to go on holiday with her parents and her brother. Not like this, they don’t, Eleanor had wanted to say. She was so used to worrying about things – whether she would break her arm falling off the horse at gym, just like Moira at school, whether her mum or dad would die of a terrible disease, whether she herself was dying of a secret disease because she was sure her periods were heavier than everyone else’s, and the letter in Mizz magazine had said if you were worried about it you should definitely go to the doctor – all these things kept her awake at night, till her heart pounded and then she worried that her heart rate was too fast and would explode and she had never noticed that all of a sudden her parents seemed to hate each other. Suddenly something was, she knew, wrong, terribly wrong, and it was only when she played her music really loud or curled up on her bed with a book that the tide of fear seemed to recede, for a little while.
They’d had an OK day today. A walk along towards Talisker Bay where the whisky was made; Dad had told Rhodes he could try some at the distillery, since he was nearly eighteen. The air was fresh and clear, the sky was a perfect powder blue, the last of the midges really had gone, and Eleanor was almost glad to be out of her room for once, outside with her parents and her brother. Just like a normal family on a normal holiday.
The trouble had started today when they got back and there was frozen pizza for lunch. Dad had had a go at Mum because it wasn’t properly defrosted, soggy in the middle, and she’d shouted at him. Eleanor and Rhodes were used to this at home, but Dad was a GP who worked late and often didn’t notice the burnt pasta,